Stalks of sugarcane plants and the like are processed to yield several types of products including food products. A primary product of the sugarcane plant is sugar used as human food and made from juice extracted from the pith of the stalk. The woody fibers and the waxy epidermal layer of the stalk are used to make a variety of other products. Certain other plants (e.g., sweet sorghum) are similar to sugarcane in that they are grasses having woody grass stalks and are processed to yield a wide variety of products. While there is frequent reference herein to sugarcane, it is to be understood that this invention applies to processing of woody grass stalks like sugarcane and sweet sorghum or certain of their constituents. At no point, including the claims, is any reference to sugarcane to be limiting.
In many areas of the world, sugarcane is harvested by hand by grasping the stalk and severing it near its base with a machete. The cane cutter then rests the freshly-cut butt end of the stalk on the ground while leaves and the top of the stalk are removed. The stalks are then dropped in windrows for machine or hand-loading into carts or trucks.
Placement of the freshly cut end of the stalk on the earth causes the stalk to pick up dirt at the area of contact. The sugarcane stalk can also become dirty when rainfall splashes mud and particles of soil up onto the lower portion of the growing stalk.
An early step in the process of making useful products from sugarcane stalks involves cutting the stalk into billets. It is apparent from the foregoing that irrespective of whether the sugarcane is harvested by hand or mechanically, at least the lowermost billets cut from a stalk will be unsuitably dirty unless washed.
Apparatus exists for washing mud and dirt from the entire unbilleted sugarcane stalk but such apparatus has been found unsuitable for use with cane stalks which have been cut to billets. Irrespective of the process used to obtain products from such billets, they should be thoroughly washed before further processing. This is especially important when such billets are used to make food products for human consumption.
An improved apparatus for thoroughly washing sugarcane billets would be an important advance in the art.